Metapack, time to leave? who are you using?

[DCP]

Hi,
I have been using metapack for years. They link in well with my cart, and I'm comfortable with our setup.
What concerns me about Metapack is that they are growing and now have some pretty large clients like Tesco etc.

We're a small business and I'm starting to wonder whether Metapack will still provide the level same service and customer care to smaller fish like us.

A few things are bugging me, but the thing which has really annoyed me is that I went to order my labels today and I saw a £4.00 per roll!
They never used to charge me for labels. Now waiting to here their response, but I fear it will now be more of a 'take it or leave it' attitude.

I wondered what other alternatives are out there for label and courier management.

Metapack's advantage for us is that it takes in all the order info like weight and address (via api), and allocates it to the best rate courier so that it is ready to print.
This also includes royal mail, so for example, you put in all your shipping rates and it will work out at what point it's best to allocate to royal mail or courier (eg dpd). you can set it in different ways.

 

[DCP]

update:
spoke with metapack and apparently they changed their policy in dec-2010 and now charge £4.00 for 400 roll of labels.

must have missed that email. unfortunetly they send me very long and very boring emails far too frequently, ignored by me very fast, usually about their servers.

 

[ESUP]

How do you find Metapack integrate with Royal Mail?

We were all ready to sign up today and then I was told we would still have to enter the OBA information in every day. That isn't what we were told when we did their online demo, so a bit of a blow really as the idea was to save time in our warehouses!

 

[dx3webs]

We have one client using them via magento.. their systems causes a ridiculous load on the server.. they don't seem to care a great deal.

 

[DCP]

How do you find Metapack integrate with Royal Mail?

We were all ready to sign up today and then I was told we would still have to enter the OBA information in every day. That isn't what we were told when we did their online demo, so a bit of a blow really as the idea was to save time in our warehouses!

Yes, we have to book out OBA every evening. We only send approx 100 parcels a day, so it's not really much of a job.

metapack calculates the average weight for the parcels sent on each day's manifest, so it's relatively easy to book out packetpost etc on oba.

I can definetly relate to the other comment about their 'don't seem to care much' attitude though. When I first joined I used to be able to call the person why orginially set me up for advice or help, but now they've grown in size, they have a more official 'dedicated' support line who generally can help but I still liked it better before.

The other problem I have, is that because our setup is api, when there's issues there's always a pointing of fingers from both sides of the api and sometimes you feel like you're just being bounced back and forth

 

[ESUP]

Yes, we have to book out OBA every evening. We only send approx 100 parcels a day, so it's not really much of a job.

metapack calculates the average weight for the parcels sent on each day's manifest, so it's relatively easy to book out packetpost etc on oba.

Do they do this based on the average of all parcels or group it by weight bands?

We sort ours into weight bands, then book each weight band in. It is a huge saving and we are keen to continue with this.

I have been told today they are expecting to have the OBA integrated within a couple of weeks, so sounds positive.

 

[leepaulkennedy]

They have partnered with some large retailers whom will be putting immense pressure onto them to ensure everything is right. Unfortunately, Tesco's and others are more important shipping thousands of orders a day while your only shipping a handful.

If you want a more personal customer service, maybe you should switch services to a smaller company who will benefit and appreciate your custom more.
Best of luck

 

[MetaPack]

Having just been made aware of these comments I thought I should reply.

Firstly I am concerned to hear that we are proving difficult to do business with. I can assure you that all customers are important to us.
To answer 2 specific points that have been made. New accounts are supported by the implementation team for 4 weeks post go live and are then transferred to the support group. This is a standard preactice both here and at other businesses. If specifics can be given I will be happy to investigate.

Secondly, the labels are now charged seperately. This was introduced in Dec 2010. This represents the only increase applied to the Saas model since it was launched in 2007. The label we supply is only a prerequisite for certain carriers. It could be that you dont need them.



As an aside can I would draw your attention to CDS (Complete Delivery Solution), a new product that we have just launched which offers something more to the SME's. In this we have purchsed the services of a number of carriers directly and offer centralised purchasing, customer care, carrier management and all admin. A shipping rate is offered to our client which wraps up all "software only" charges with all functions activated.

Happy to take any questions directly if you have any

 

[DCP]

They have partnered with some large retailers whom will be putting immense pressure onto them to ensure everything is right. Unfortunately, Tesco's and others are more important shipping thousands of orders a day while your only shipping a handful.

If you want a more personal customer service, maybe you should switch services to a smaller company who will benefit and appreciate your custom more.
Best of luck

i'm definetly looking into this...any recommendations for other companies which offer similar software?
Metapack just annoy me now.
They have all these fancy support systems which only serve to make things more tedious for me.

no account manager/point of contact
+
terrible telephone support
is a bad combination.

if you call them with a question, all the support guys ever seem to want to do is tell you to email (very annoying!)

so far, i've just been riding it because all the changes ive needed sorting are all relatively small. now i want to make a new integration with metapack for another site. posted an email last week...still no reply. waiting to see what their response is...if they annoy me anymore, I'm gone.

so much easier when i started. i'd just call a chap called mark and he'd sort it.

 

[GFS Expert]

If you are looking for an alternative; please feel free to visit "Justshoutgfs"

 

[ESUP]

We were offered 12p per parcel last year, today I have just been told for us to sign up would be 14p per parcel and they won't offer the free signup (that was offered late last year). We wouldn't sign up last year as their system then did not integrate to OBA properly. It would have meant we would pay for basically a label and nothing more (we already print our PPI).

To be honest I was ready to sign up today at the 12p per parcel as we are also using Linnworks but after todays email that will not be the case.

I have spoke to justshoutgfs in the past from a DPD recommendation but still waiting for them to contact us.

 

[GFS Expert]

Hello,

Apologies for the delay in responding to this post; we will make contact with you.

If you need to make contact with us, please send a PM......

Many thanks;

 

[DCP]

an update on my experiences with metapack:

we have recently switched from channeladvisor to esellerpro.

due to channeladvisor contract dates etc, time was short and as such i had to give short notice to metapack about changing the integration. On my behalf esellerpro requested the change to integrate to esellerpro.

the esellerpro integrator wrote a detailed email of what steps are required and expressed the urgency.

metapacks first response was: "please fill in their change request form".
(if you like forms, you will love metapack! this is their response to anything. how do i do this? fill in the form. where do i do this? fill in the form. can you fix this? fill in the form)

so anyway, to cut a long story short, the customer service guy said we cannot do the change within the 2 days i needed (ignoring the fact ive been within metapack for years).
i needed some way of printing labels, so i decided to dump metapack's for our royal mail parcels, and integrated directly using esellerpro who did it the same day. im now able to use integrated invoice labels. it was our first day packing with the new system but overall it looks like integrating esellerpro directly to royalmail has saved me time and money. i'm also going to integrate direct with my couriers also and fade off metapack altogether.

yes, i have lost the ability to auto-allocate to cheapest courier, but i think you need to be sending ALOT of international parcels and have many couriers setup, before you see financial gain.

i no longer have to pay the % shippping cost commission charge to metapack, and we like integrated invoice labels...so i'm happy.

 

[markpadam]

We currently use Linnworks but are considering eSellerPro, How have you would the system compared to Channel Advisor (which we used some years ago)?

 

[kulture]

I currently use linnworks but not 100% happy. Can I ask why you are looking elsewhere. You can pm me if you want

 

[DCP]

UPDATE:
I'm now 3 months in with esellerpro and the tables have turned.
Now that I'm being slowly nudged out of implementation, I've been trying to use their support systems more. Total nightmare. Channeladvisor was miles better.

Theres no phone support and their live chat support is tedious. ESP help pages (the 'wiki') is crap.... so if you're stuck, you're basically snookered.

Courier integration has not been as smooth as I was hoping. Getting hold of anyone who can actually get a job done for you in ESP is very hard. So, now I'm trying to get ESP to integrate with Metapack (which is what I originally wanted) but it's very frustrating as you can find yourself being bounced from one company to the other and noone has the time or is really interested in helping you.

 

[kulture]

I still use Linnworks and am much happier. Their support went through a blip, but they reacted proactively to resolve this. You have to admire a company that admits that their support was getting worse in general and outlined plans on how they would fix THEIR PROBLEM.

 

[greengecko]

Would it not be possible to have a Royal Mail account, and a courier account - both integrated with Linnworks?

I guess there may be another reason why you need Metapack or such which offer such a range of services. The reason we didn't sign up with them was because they worked out much more expensive that direct with couriers.

 

[Gon9za3lez]

I wondered what other alternatives are out there for label and courier management.

thank you

 

[veeqo]

Hello All,

Interesting thread about Metapack and the other solutions out there. Has anyone seen the new CDS service from Metapack and any opinions on that?

We are building a cloud based solution for SME's to manage their orders/inventory across all their channels.

Similar I would say to eSellerPro, but cheaper and with transparent pricing. Linnworks is a good solution but not 100% cloud based.

I am looking for UK businesses to join in the beta stage of our program, we really want feedback on what is missing and what needs changing from real users. We want to avoid the issues encountered by some of the users on this thread! Business who join in can help tailor the system to their needs and get a free service

Matthew
Veeqo.Com